This year has been great for European and American travelers with mobile phones, with more airlines testing systems for boarding passes downloaded onto their browser-enabled handsets. Delta joined Continental in allowing domestic travelers to check-in and display their boarding pass on cell phone screens as a two-dimensional barcode. This furthers the trend begun by Air France, KLM and Air Canada, who began testing last year for short- and medium-haul flights. Air France’s system began as a simple check-in process, with an option for the user to receive a text message reminder prior to the flight date, and a confirmation afterwards.

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Indian company Infosys is bringing an internet-like experience to brick-and-mortar shopping. The IT and consulting firm launched ShoppingTrip 360, a“360-degree view of the shopping trip,” on July 31st.

Infosys hopes to make retail shopping as smart as internet shopping. Measuring “how” shoppers buy, as opposed to merely “what” they buy.

“ShoppingTrip360 leverages a network of wireless sensor-based applications within the store that allows people (shoppers), places (retailers) and products (CPG companies) to collaborate in real-time by creating an information ecosystem,” explains Girish A Ramachandra, head of innovations practice, retail, CPG and logistics for Infosys.

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Several newly launched initiatives in the U.S. and other countries aim to allow governments to mine our personal data at border crossings. Legislation in the U.S. and Australia would give governments great freedom to search – and in some cases seize – our personal electronic devices.

U.S. Homeland Security can now seize laptops and other electronic devices taken across the border and hold them for an indefinite period, copying hard drives without need of warrants or probable cause. Officials are authorized to deep-scan hard drives to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and copyright infringers.

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Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a prototype computer, Sphere, at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2008 in Redmond, Washington.

Sphere is composed of a large spherical screen atop an infrared projector. The projector projects images onto the screen, while at the same time allowing multi-touch manipulation of the images, so that it can be used by several users at once. Sphere uses a special algorithm to show images without distortion, as they would look on a flat screen.

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Software giant Microsoft (MSFT) announced it would purchase the year old company Powerset, a start-up using principals of linguistics in an attempt to make Internet keyword search easier.

Though cell phones offer an “autotexting” function, one that finishes words begun by the writer, Powerset’s technology goes further.

It takes a given word, breaking it down based on meaning, with the end of allowing users to type in inexact concepts that would, thesaurus-like, bring up the intended word(s).

“Powerset has always been a small company with big dreams,” explained company product manager Mark Johnson in a Powerset blog post regarding the deal.

He continued the post by saying the company has the ambitious “ultimate goal of changing the way humans interact with computers through language.”

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The Chrysler Corporation will make wireless Internet available as an option in its 2009 models, including most Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler models.

The Internet-enabled models will come as a dealer-installed option and carry a monthly service fee by September of 2009, according to the company.

Many say such wireless features will become standard, but Chrysler is the first car maker to make it available.

The wireless feature will be part of Chrysler’s Uconnect system that enables the driver to access the car stereo through the steering wheel, connect to BlueTooth, and adapt the stereo to control an MP3 player when plugged in.

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The ’smartphone’ arms race has just gotten a bit colder. Nokia upped the ante Monday, or at the very least began the catch-up process, by purchasing Plazes, CNBC reported.

Much like its more established predecessors Twitter and Jaiku, Plazes is a social networking start-up service. But where Twitter and Jaiku provide venues for “micro-blogging,” or character-limited forums by which to inform all friends and contacts also using the service of present activities or thoughts, Plazes focuses, as its name would indicate, on place.

It grants subscribers access to “location -aware services,” explained CNBC’s article, so users can better prepare for their social activities.

So buying the service, should make Nokia’s phones more competitive in the Internet-equipped cell phone arena cluttered with BlackBerries, the original iPhone and the upcoming iPhone G3, among others.

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With the Alzheimer’s Association’s current estimates showing 10 million baby boomers will go through the degenerative disease, many are determined to fight back with brain fitness programs, CNN reported Wednesday.

Nintendo’s Brain Age is but one of a series of games and puzzles, such as crosswords and sudoku, meant to keep memory loss and signs of dementia at bay.

Chris Santos is not an old man. He began putting his brain through a series of mental exercises at 25. That was seven years ago, and Santos has since won the 2008 USA Memory Championship, proving he could learn 100 new names, faces and random words in 15 minutes as well as by memorizing the contents and order of a shuffled deck of cards in three.

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Luxemborg-based and eBay-owned Skype launched its newest version, Skype 4.0, on Wednesday with new features and a layout that makes video its primary component and pictures easier to see in cell phone calls.

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On Monday, Nokia unveiled two new phones aimed at the business market in an attempt to create competition for RIM’s dominant Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone.

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